For every project, there will be a range of individuals or groups who have an interest in the different stages of the project. It could be the end users of an IT system, the line managers who will be expected to lead a restructuring initiative throughout the organisation, or the marketing department which will promote a new product.

Some people (especially those professionally involved in operations management!) argue that operations management involves everything an organisation does. In this sense, every manager is an operations manager, since all managers are responsible for contributing to the activities required to create and deliver an organisation's goods or services. However, others argue that this definition is too wide, and that the operations function is about producing the right amount of a good or service, at the right time, of the right quality and at the right cost to meet customer requirements.

The balanced scorecard framework (Kaplan and Norton, 1998) is one approach to taking account of stakeholder interests. It is based on the principle that organisations need to serve the interests of multiple stakeholder groups simultaneously. Failure to serve the needs of one is likely to prevent them from effectively serving the needs of the others. For example, failure to serve the needs of customers will damage a firm's ability to serve the financial needs of shareholders.

The market perspective on strategy suggests that a major focus of strategic decision-making is how best to ensure an effective fit between an organisation and its environment. However, that fit is not static. The challenge is constantly to monitor and forecast changes in the business environment and to adapt the organisation and its strategy accordingly.